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SPEECH OF C. M; CLAY 



BEFOKK THE YOUNG MEN'S REPUBLICAN CENTRAL UNION OF NEW YORK, 
IN THE TABERNACLE, OCTOBER 21th, 185(5. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The principles of the Republican party, which I stand 
here to-night to vindicate, have received no impetus from 
success: so, defeat cannot weaken their power. This 
presidential contest involves no less an issue than that 
which aroused our fathers in 1776 to a separation from 
the British Crown. Indeed it is but a continuation of 
that struggle, which Jefferson, the great leader of the 
Democracy, in all the power of all his antecedents, him- 
self the drawer of the Declaration of Independence, did 
not dare to carry out, in his old age, but which he 
declared was yet to be determined; leaving it, in his own 
words, to younger men to accomplish that revolution, 
which he and his compatriots had but "begun" in 177G. 
This question then is above mere party success: it involves 
not only measures and principles, but distinct civiliza- 
tions. On one side are the world-long advocates of 
despotism ; the arbitrary rule of the few over the many; 
appealing to those old Avorn out arguments of Caste, 
Divine right, and force. On the other side are those 
great principles of 1776; recognizing man in the sacred- 



V * ? ? c 

2 

ness of individuality, without regard to his involuntary- 
antecedents, and assigning him consideration and position 
according to merit only. The South represents the one 
idea: the North — the other. It is true that when the 
constitution of 1789 was adopted, all these States, except 
Massachusetts, (four others having only initiated her 
policy) were slave states. But it is also true that these 
embryo principles were as distinctly existent in 1776, as 
in 1856. You of the North, were more especially the 
descendants of Protestant Christians — the followers of 
Luther, of Calvin and of Knox. You carried into your 
civil institutions your idea of Christian equality and 
liberty: and hence, when you framed the Constitution of 
1789, it was easy for you to throw off that feature which 
was antagonistic to your avowals, and to conform your 
constitutions to the idea of true democracy, as it now 
exists in the free states of this Union. In this light of 
history, I stand here to defend you from the oft repeated 
calumny of mercenary motive in the liberation of your 
slaves. If some of the slaveholders of these states sold 
their slaves South, they were those who never assented 
to the political action of the North; and who never con- 
ceived those glorious sentiments which, with overwhelm- 
ing force, fashioned these institutions of the sixteen 
free states of the Union. On the other hand, although 
the leading minds and Tat riots of the South, recognized 
in common with the North, man's equality before the 
law, and so far as political institutions are concerned; 
yet, the great mass of the Southern people did not con- 
ceive or avow this greal idea. They were mostly the 
descendants of the British aristocracy proper, the Sir 
Walter Raleigh's, the Lord Baltimore's, and the younger 
sons of the nubilitv and their numerous adherents, wlo 



always exaggerate the ideas of their superiors. It was 
because these men did not recognize the idea of man's 
equality, as proclaimed by our Fathers, that the Federal 
Constitution was so long delayed. This was the great 
obstacle in the way of its formation, and its final adoption. 
And hence, although Washington, and Jefferson, and 
Madison, and Henry, and Lee, and other leading men of 
the South favored this idea, there still remained in the 
South oligarchial and despotic elements of government. 
Here, then, were the two distinct principles: the one 
despotic, and relying upon force : the other republican, 
and appealing to the better sentiments of mankind for 
its sanction. I need not say to you, that these prin- 
ciples are incompatible with each other. Hence, not- 
withstanding there was a peace and truce proclaimed, 
and an acquiescence in a common government, as if there 
was eternal fraternity: yet, there has been, of necessity, 
from the beginning, a conflict going on between them, 
deepening and widening from 1789, until now, in 1856, 
they stand face to face, openly contending for absolute 
supremacy. I thank God it is so. As this question 
must be settled, the sooner it is settled the better. If 
oligarchy be better than republicanism, then let us 
accept it now. Let us not only spread it over Kansas — 
the Territories — over Central North America, to the 
Pacific, and to the Canada line; but let it come home, 
and take its place in these free states, as is its right. 
But if, on the contrary, Liberty is better than Despotism, 
as I have an indestructible faith that it is: and that you 
will so decide that it is: then let her take possession of 
the government, her legitimate domain, now. I know 
there is a very large class in every community who 
are governed by their idea of their material interests.. 



Daniel Webster, in all the greatness of his intellect, and 
expansion of his sentiments, ventured to make the asser- 
tion, that "governments were formed for the protection 
of property" ! Not so, thought our fathers of 1776. They 
said, governments were instituted for the protection of 
"life," "liberty," and property. But let those who are so 
fearful that their material interests will be jeapordied 
by the agitation of the'slavery question, look at the facts. 
I need but state the condition of Southern society to 
show you that, so far as all development is concerned, we 
might determine a priori, that we cannot contend with 
the institutions of the North. Let us see: there are, in 
round numbers', 347,000 persons who control the wealth 
and the government of the South! They hold 3,500,000 
slaves, not simply of the African race, but of all com- 
plexions; from the jet black of the tropical sun, up to 
the rosy-cheeked, the blue-eyed and auburn-haired; such 
as [ see before me to-night. This aristocracy may stand 
in the place of Kings, Marquises and Dukes — slavery 
may be a necessary conservative element — it may be 
" the corner stone of liberty" — it may be the solution of 
the vexed question of capital and labor — it may be a 
Divine institution — but whatever else it may be, — I say 
it is not Democracy! But the "great unwashed" are too 
fastidious to care about "niggerism." Then here are 
6,000,000 of Southern whites, subject to the rule of the 
847,000 in life, person, property and character, to the 
same extent in kind, as the African slaves. The same 
defence may be again made — this may be the best rela- 
tion of the masses to the governing few — the natural, 
inevitable order of things — but whatever else it may be, 
1 Bay once more, i\ i : nol Democracy! But wlnt have 
the Oligarchy done for the 9,000,000 Boula under their 



control and providence? What have they done for 
material development ? It is true, that it is the interest 
of the ruling class to get as much labor out of the 9,000,- 
000 as possible ; but the ruling class are idle ; and, of 
course, the laborers are idle. How then can material 
prosperity be developed? Again, we have 3,500,000 
operatives, absolutely ignorant of the great natural and 
artificial powers for the creation of wealth ; and 6,500,000 
comparatively ignorant. How then, can they compete with 
those, who, by common schools make the whole people 
acquainted with the chemical and mechanical powers? 
Here the children of the rich and poor meet upon terms 
of perfect equality, and receive a like education ; and 
whatever genius, talent and intellect the man possesses, 
is developed not for himself only, but for society also. 
We have taken Man, and subjected him to our will: you 
have regarded the "higher law," and seized upon the 
elements — upon steam, upon water-power — upon chem- 
istry, upon electricity — upon the winds, and upon the 
waves, and made them your omnipotent slaves. We pass 
by now your acknowledged superiorities, and come to 
agriculture, where the advocates of slavery, until the 
overpowering force of statistics were brought to bear, 
were wont to entrench themselves. There you see a 
spars'e population, spread over an immense territory, of 
every variety of climate, soil, and production — what does 
it avail? The educated master scorns to labor; the 
ignorant, the uninterested slave, shirks all he can. The 
result is not a progressive and Ian d-impro ving agriculture, 
the combined effect of self-interest and intelligent appli- 
cation of scientific processes; but everywhere prevails 
the "skinning system," which like the army- worm preys 
upon the virgin fertility of the soil, and marches to new 



G 

fields of consumption, leaving desolation and sterility 
behind. This gentlemen, is not the imagining of a 
"fanatic" heated by extravagance and deluded by "glit- 
tering generalities of revolutionary times " ! My witness 
is the very head and front of the "Chivalry" himself — 
H. A. Wise, of Virginia. The New York Herald, then 
good authority certainly, reports him in his canvass for 
Governor, as thus speaking of the desolation of Virginia. 
With coal, and iron, and marble, and other minerals of 
unequalled value, they lie untouched as by the hands of 
the primitive Indians. There is the Blue Ridge pene- * 
trating the clouds and pouring down perennial streams 
of water-power; without manufacturers sufficient to 
clothe her half naked slaves. Without manufacturers 
and mining there is no commerce ; and with the finest 
harbors in the world, there is not a ship upon the stocks, 
nor a sail unfurled ! Even in her boasted agriculture 
she is fast decaying — pursuing the skinning system, she 
has worn out the finest virgin soil ever spread out to 
the habitation of men. But Mr. Wise did not confine 
himself to simple statement, he grew dramatic in his 
utterance: he described a stranger as passing through 
the "Old Dominion." "And whose farm is that? " says 
A. to B. (For your benefit I will portray some of 
these pictures familiar to all the South.) There, Avhere 
once corn, wheat and tobacco rewarded luxuriantly the 
culture of the primitive fields, are the mullen, the brier, 
and the broom-sedge struggling into feeble existence. 
The neglected furrow widens and deepens into impass- 
ible ravines. The fences are gone. There are the 
shattered cottage and the broken hearthstone of the 
laboring white, driven into exile by the strong compe- 
tition of unpaid labor. The marigolds — the larkspur — 



7 

the cockscomb — and the sun-flower, (these rude proofs 
of divine taste, which oppression cannot entirely crush 
out from the hearts of the poor,) fed upon by wretched 
straggling sheep, — are a melancholy commentay upon 
the justice of God, that the lie shall not live forever! 
"Well, whose farm is that?" says A. to B. — "That is 
mine, " says B. the slaveholder — And "whose is that?" 
"mine too" says B. And yet another, "whose is that?" 
"That is mine too" said B. reluctantly, and musing, "but 
look here, stranger, don't suppose I am so d — d poor as 
to own all the land about here." Mr. Wise concludes 
without telling the people of Virginia that it is Slavery 
which is the root of all our woe ! Yes sir, we took refuge 
from European oppression beyond the wide Atlantic. 
We met the savage wild beasts and more savage Indians : 
we cleared the gloomy forests and the melancholy mias- 
matic swamps and built up the hearthstone, flattering 
ourselves that here under our own vine and fig-tree we 
should for ourselves and our posterity forever find 
security. But soon that infernal curse, African slavery 
pursues us to our retreats, and expels us from our homes. 
Again we pull up stakes, and away over the Alleghany 
mountains, in the western wilds, we seek once more a 
home: once more we meet and subdue the same foes, 
and with renewed hope, we establish our household gods, 
slavery again pursues us! We fly over the wide 
Mississippi; into Missouri: move on into Kansas; again 
it bays, like a hungry blood-hound our fleeing steps. 
And so it will pursue us : like the voice of destiny to 
the Wandering Jew crying ever, march — march! until 
we shall be precipitated in the far Pacific ocean itself! 
Well did my distinguished friend N. P. Banks tell you in 
Wall street, that although the South had the grea}; 



8 

staples of rice, sugar, tobacco and cotton, a more genial 
clime, a more fertile soil and 250,000 square miles more 
territory than the North, yet she only produces 47-100ths 
of the agricultural, and only 21-100ths of the mechanical, 
mercantile and other productive wealth of the Union ! 
I need not tell you that the statistics and reports of the 
patent office show that as agriculture languishes, so will 
manufacturers languish. One is dependent upon the 
other. Stimulated, scientific agriculture produces the 
like condition in manufacturers ; and the reverse. The 
supply is regulated by the demand. Yet the South 
boasts that she lacks manufacturers. A leading Southern 
journal has ventured to avow that they allowed the 
villiages to go unrepaired into decay, because they 
preferred a country population! I was so fanatical as 
to sup£>ose that cities did not depend upon the good will 
of any set of gentlemen, however powerful ; but, upon 
fixed laws! I had imagined that cities, were the expo- 
nents of the productive and consumptive power of the 
country ; and that where there was a great and productive 
rural population, there, great cities, the seats of com- 
merce and manufactures, would spring up to supply its 
wants! The South then in acknowledging her want of 
cities, admits her poverty, and decline into barbarism ! 
The truth is, we are infinitely behind the North even in 
agriculture, as otherwise shown. When you make new 
improvaments in the application of powor to the deve- 
lopement of agriculture, you send your old, useless rub- 
bish down to the Keitts and Brooks' of the South : and 
whilstyouare astonishing the world with Manny's reaper, 
all the ingenuity of all the slaves, and of all the aristocracy 
is exhausted in fitting the screws in the old cradles; with 
which they knock down more grain than they cut. Even 



9 

axe andhoe helves, which Northern freemen make during 
rainy days, are sold in all the South. You are building 
dwelling houses, and sending them ready to be set up 
into Kentucky and Tennessee and 'other slave states: for 
aught I know they are sent to the land of Quattlebum 
himself, into South Carolina! If there are no manufac- 
turers, there is no commerce. In vain do men go to 
Nashville, and to Knoxville, and to Memphis and to 
Charleston, in their annual farce of Southern conventions, 
to build up Southern commerce, and to break down the 
abolition cities of Philadelphia, Boston and New York. 
The orator rises upon a Northern made carpet; clothed 
cap-a-pie in Northern fabrics, and offers his resolutions 
written upon Northern paper, with a Northern made pen, 
and returns to his home upon a Northern car; or being 
killed, is put into a Northern shroud, and buried in a 
Northern coffin, and has his funeral preached from a text 
in a Northern Bible, and his manes propitiated by a psalm 
from a Northern hymn book, set to Northern music, 
And they resolve and resolve : and forthwith there's not 
another ton of shipping built, or added to the manufac- 
tures of the South. And yet these men are not fools! 
They never invite such men as I to their conventions; 
because I would tell them that slavery is the cause of 
their poverty, that it is free labor which they need. Yes, 
Sirs, free labor, free thought which creates matter anew: 
which declares "let there be light" and it beams upon 
the marble columns of your Exchange, streams along 
illimitable rail-roads — and flashes upon the white can- 
vass of your conquering oaks — which springing from 
the Divine Intelligence, partakes of its Omnipotence; and 
out of chaos looms up worlds of unimaginable beauty 
and glory! They know what they are about: making 



10 

and strengthening a Southern faction to act efficiently 
in dissolving the Union, when they can no longer use it 
for slavery. When they are driven from every field of 
fair discussion they cut short the argument by lustily 
crying out at the top of their voices : "0 ! cotton is king!" 
On the contrary I proclaim that — grass is king! When 
we look at the statistics we find that there are nine 
staple articles of production, of larger value than cotton! 
Because the Oligarchy are trying to overthrow the dicta 
of our Fathers, cotton and free labor are not, therefore, 
incompatible ! I am told by a friend, himself a slave- 
holder, (and therefore, to them at least a good witness), 
that in extreme south-western Texas, the Germans, true 
to their national instincts, reject slave labor; and raise 
more cotton to the acre (and worth from a cent to a cent 
and a half more per pound) than the Oligarchy raise. 
I, myself, can bear testimony that in the extreme South, 
in New Orleans, on the levee, where the intensity of the 
Southern sun is increased by reflection from red brick 
walls, the laboring men — hackmen — draymen — and 
stevedores are almost exclusively white, and free, and of 
vigorous health. If the white, free laborer can live 
there, much more surely can he live in the open and 
more genial country. These facts come late in life to 
illustrate what I have always said, that whatever is right 
is always expedient. Again we are told that cotton per- 
forms all the exchanges : and liquidates our foreign debts: 
and that without it, the commerce of the world would be 
deranged. But the truth is, this staple is earned abroad 
and its value more than supplied in teas, silks, wines, 
brandies and other questionable luxuries. If you were 
to blot out the whole foreign trade in cotton, the country 
in the eyes of true political economy would be greatly 



11 

the gainer ; in domestic industry; in home manufactures ; 
home labor ; and a home market for consumption. But 
grant that I err in all this : are all the hopes of our 
Fathers; our Christian morality; a higher civilization; 
and the world's divine aspirations; all to be given up for 
a little more cotton? More noble, we are told, were the 
sentiments of the heathen world! When Pompey the 
Great lay sick and was told that his life depended upon 
his eating an exotic bird, which could only be found in 
the aviaries of Lucullus, he turned himself away, with 
the immortal exclamation "must Pompey die, unless 
Lucullus had been rich!" But when the economical 
argument is exhausted, the South turns from despair into 
triumph, avowing that whatever else you may say about 
slavery, it builds up men! Well, there is some truth in 
that. You cannot scare those men of the South. I wish 
I could say as much for the Northern Democracy! Yet 
after all it is not any thing inherent in slavery, but the 
circumstances which attend the governing power, the 
world over, which give them these elements of rule. I 
care not whether it be a monarchy or a republic, where 
there is power, there will be sycophants! Our distin- 
guished friend Emerson, with all his philosophical acute- 
ness, thinks that there is really more courage in the 
South, than in the North. He argues in this wise : the 
more the man is sensual, and the more he lacks the moral 
and intellectual, the more is he brave : and the less he 
has to live for, the more ready is he to die. Emerson 
must have been eating late suppers and reading Shak- 
speare : "thus does conscience make cowards of us all." 
Thucydides in his oration in memory of those who fell in 
the Peloponnesian war, thought far differently. It was 
the spirit of equality and self respect which made the 



12 

Athenians invincible, and though they carried the arts 
of civilized luxury to greater height than the other 
Greeks, they always conquered them in equal fight. 
"Not one of these" says he "was at all induced to 
shrink from danger, through the fondness of those de- 
lights which the peaceful affluent life bestows: not 
one was less lavish of his life, through that flattering 
hope attendant upon want, that poverty at length might 
be exchanged for affluence : thinking it more glorious to 
defend themselves and die in the attempt, than to yield 
and live, they presented their bodies to the shock of 
battle and thus discharged the duty, that brave men owe 
to their Country." No, history bears us out : the purest 
civilization is ever powerful over the idle and dissolute: 
those who have most to live for, have ever been the 
readiest to die, in that defence. Justice and virtue only 
inspire true courage: and well has it been said and sung, 
that "men were only brave where women true." Now, 
fellow citizens, these are the institutions which on this 
continent contend for the mastery over the republican- 
ism of the North. You cannot avoid the issue. Let us 
look at some of the straggling facts. Think then of the 
conquest of Kansas. I lay aside, for the present, all con- 
siderations of the right being on the side of Liberty 
against slavery; all considerations of the violation of a 
solemn compromise : all considerations of a violated 
constitution, laws, and our dearest safeguards of all 
liberty; all considerations of her forcible subjection by 
an invasion from a sister state and its mantainance by 
the army of the federal government: and take issue 
upon this broad idea of "liberty, and union" which their 
banners flaunt in our faces whenever we bring up these 
appeals of our brethren — the blood crying up from the 



13 

ground in Kansas ! Have we not done enough for the Union? 
I find that in the Constitution of 1789 the word " slave " 
is not mentioned. How then can this be a government 
where liberty is sectional and slavery national? I re- 
verse the proposition, and I say, slavery is sectional and 
liberty national. James Madison, himself a slaveholder, 
Governor of Virginia, and President of the United States, 
tells us why slavery was not named in that instrument. 
He said that when slavery had ceased to exist on this 
continent, that they did not wish its memory to remain 
on record. Again, another distinguished democrat, per- 
haps you have heard the name? — Thomas Jefferson — 
tells us that the object of the "constitution" and the 
"union," was to establish Justice and Liberty — not 
Slavery. Men of New York this L is not a matter as to 
color: the blind adherents of the South who enslave the 
Black man to-day, will when interest dictates, enslave 
the White man to-morrow! Where is your love of the 
"union" and the "constitution," when you trample upon 
that clause which declares that no person's life, liberty 
or property shall be taken from him, without "due pro- 
cess of law"? The constitution does not give congress 
the power to establish slavery in the territories, but 
forbids the same. It is a rule of law and common sense^ 
that power which is not possessed, cannot be delegated: 
if congress cannot make slaves, neither can the estab- 
lished territorial government do it — if the territorial 
government cannot do it, how can the people, who are 
subjects and not the originators of the territorial gov- 
ernment do it? And if the whole people in the territo- 
ries cannot establish slavery, much less can one or more 
of the people, Eeitt or Brooks, establish Slavery there. 
If there is any such right of inherent sovereignty in the 



14 

people of Kansas, or other territory, which ascends to 
the power of overthrowing the prohibitions of the con- 
stitution, then are the people there, higher than the con- 
stitution, while it declares the very reverse. And any 
attempt to impose a government upon them by congress 
(which is superior to law emanating from government, 
which is the exponent of the autocracy or sovereignty of 
the people) is an usurpation. Thus is the democratic 
party and its backers placed in this fatal dilemma : if 
slavery exists in Kansas by congressional action, it is 
unconstitutional : if it exists by popular sovereign action, 
then is Congress maintaining an arbitrary military rule 
over the conquered people of Kansas, by backing up the 
territorial government with the army of the United 
States! But you have compromised again and again, in 
order to satiate this power which knows no satiation. 
You have given them Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississ- 
ippi, and Alabama, and Florida, and Missouri, and Louis- 
iana, and Arkansas, and Texas ; and have made war upon 
a sister republic to extend the area of slavery, and 
according to Mr. Webster, the South is entitled to three 
more slave states out of the bounds of Texas, wheD th< \ 
shall apply for admission into the Union. In all these 
concessions, the South has returned, boasting that she na 
outyankeed Yankeedom! And now, when you are hem- 
med in on all sides, and population presses upon sub- 
sistence: when you gather up the stones upon your 
sterile soil: when you descend into the unhealthy mines 
of coal and iron: when you dam the streams of your 
granite hills; and sell your products of manufacture into 
all the world; and population still pressing upon sub- 
sistence you seek refuge on the coasts of the Atlantic, 
and there take the fish and the whale on its inhospitable 



15 

shores, and still not enough! you launch out into the 
wide Pacific; and in the far regions of perpetual snows 
and ice pursue the "leviathan and draw him out with a 
hook," and exchange him for food; and still not enough: 
you leave your loved homes, of lake, and mountain, and 
glen, and taking your household gods you reluctantly 
push out into the far West, into that only strip of land 
left you by the rapacity of our masters ; hoping there to 
erect once 'more the village, the church and the school- 
house; — then these men (who have already, in Texas 
and elsewhere, millions of acres of the finest land on 
earth, still fed upon by the buffalo, and the deer, and the 
wolf,) come upon you, pistol in hand, and cry out " you 

d d abolitionists leave here or we will blow your 

brains out;" and if you don't gracefully submit, "will 
dissolve the Union!" Now, standing as I do, south of 
Mason's and Dixon's line, I am the last man to talk 
lightly of dissolving the Union. And there are many 
more such in the South. There is all the Southern 
Fillmore party. They hold with our fathers that 
Slavery is an evil and not to be extended : and whilst 
they were not willing to make sacrifices of property, or 
incur the odium and violence which the friends of liberal 
views must suffer, they were ready to oppose indirectly 
the Propaganda, by sheltering themselves under the 
conservatism of Millard Fillmore. But in the mean time 
my respected friend, Mr. Fillmore happened to be spend- 
ing his time with the crowned heads of Europe, whilst 
our people had advanced fifty years in the direction of 
true republicanism. He returns and avows, that if the 
North assumes equality in the Union, by electing a Re- 
publican President, the South ought and would dissolve 
the Union! Alas, he was born too near Sleepy Hollow; 



16 

and like poor Rip Van Winkle he waked up, expecting 
to see George the Third's portrait hanging at the inn 
door. So the South will give him a meagre support. 
The Governor of Virginia finds that he cannot carry even 
all the Democrats of the Old Dominion for a dissolution 
of the Union! And I believe that outside of South 
Carolina a majority of every state are in favor of the 
perpetuity of the Union. But allow that they are not: 
how is the Union to be dissolved? I should like to see 
Keitt and Brooks and Quattlebum marching up to 
Washington to take the treasury and the archives! I 
can imagine why they should like to rob the monies : 
but why on earth should they seize upon the archives? 
they could not read them after they had taken them ! 
But suppose a serious attempt made at such a revolution: 
how are the South to carry on the war? I have heard it 
said, that the abused old state of Sumners and Wilsons, 
and Banks, with all its fanaticism has more capital 
available for war purposes, than all the South put to- 
gether. Suppose Keitt and Brooks go to the Roths- 
childs, and other European bankers to borrow money. 
They say, "Well gentlemen, what's the matter now?" 

"Why we are going to fight the d d Yankees." — 

"What for?" Why it's a nigger war, and we are going to 
fight about it. "Niggers!" "Well what are they?" 
"Have they legs, and can they run away?" "Yes sir 
they are our main property, without which our lands are 
worthless, and we are ruined!" "Then not a dollar can 
you get upon such security." But with our President in 
the chair; with the prestige of government on our side, 
and the eternal basis of Liberty and Justice to back us, 
there is no amount of money, which we could not com- 
mand. But leaving the money question out of debate, 



17 

there is no use of disguising the weakness of the South; 
I speak more in sorrow than in anger; for I am not an 
enemy of the South : if I were, I would desert her, and 
leave her to herself; the worst fate that her greatest foe 
could invoke. There is South Carolina — (I hope Mr. 
Brooks is not present; I am not prepared for him now, 
for I would desire to give him other reception, than did 
the noble and unsuspecting Sumner,) — it is true that she 
did not send her quota of troops into the revolutionary- 
armies; because, she found it necesssary to have them 
guard, at home, her children of the patriarchal institution ! 
The other day, in the Georgia Legislature they would not 
vote money to send out the nonslaveholders to Kansas, 
because, as a leading citizen avowed, they needed them, 
to keep down the slaves at home. Half the population 
are needed for that. Then there's but three millions of 
whites to act on the offensive ; and you have as many as 
that in New York. Supposing the North and South of 
equal prowess; after the battle was over, there would 
remain fifteen unscathed free states to take peaceable 
possession of the Union! No, gentlemen, the South are 
not mad! I remember a year ago this same cry of dis- 
solution of the Union was sent forth from St. John's to 
the Rio Grande — from the. Atlantic to the Pacific. 
Massachusetts had actually sent mechanics to the House 
of Representatives and Senate of the United States, and 
one of them was about to be put into the speaker's 
chair; a place wont to be filled by the wearers of the 
purple only! And they cried out, "0 Quattlebum we 
can't stand it, the Union must be dissolved!" You 
had been engaged in digging canals, and making rail- 
roads, and building up cities, and extending your com- 
merce over all the seas; leaving in the hands of the 



18 

Oligarchy the whole control of the government. But at 
last their insolence became intolerable; they mistook 
your forbearance for cowardice, and your magnanimity 
for meanness of spirit. You began to arouse yourselves 
to the fact that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; 
you sent a different set of men to Congress, remember- 
ing whose blood flows in your veins, you determined to 
assert that great dictum of Republicanism, that the 
representative shall be the servant, not the master of the 
people. How they blustered and threatened! And yet, 
when Mr. Banks was elected speaker, how they climbed 
down from their insolent pretensions and Mr. Aiken the 
largest slaveholder of them all, asked the honor to con- 
duct him to the chair! And from that day to this, it is 
said, the wooden sword of Quattlebum sleeps unavenged 
in its scabbard! I judge of the future by the past. If 
Fremont is elected they will roar once more like the very 
Devil himself — but if you don't run — they will! They 
will do — what you have been doing the last eighty years, 
they will — acquiesce! 

Ladies, and gentlemen, I care little about men. If 
the Democracy are satisfied with James Buchanan, 
surely, we are satisfied with the man of world-wide re- 
nown, the noble, the heroic Fremont. I thank God! that 
which has been imputed to him as a reason why he 
should not be voted for, is true! It is fit that one of the 
children of the down-trodden non-slaveholders of the 
South should' be the standard-bearer of the liberties of 
his caste, and of all mankind! 

Men of New York, I think that as a citizen of a re- 
public, I have discharged my duty. Twelve years ago I 
stood upon this rostrum, and living in a slave state, in 
the midst of the Oligarchy, knowing their sentiments, 



19 

and feeling their power, I warned you of their designs 
against our common liberty. I warned you against their 
attempts upon Texas, — a foreign war — and our own 
subjection. Now, once more, I stand before you in the 
triumphant fullness of prophecy accomplished, and 
declare that this issue must be met — that one or the 
other of these vital principals must utterly prevail. I 
have discharged my duty. Again I return to the place 
of my hard and unequal struggle. Ladies, I am sad! 
Gentlemen, I am sad! lam as a reed shaken by the wind ! 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which no man 
regardeth! What argument have I not exhausted? to 
what sentiment have I not appealed, by sea and shore 
calling upon each mute and living thing — in vain? Yet, 
when I remember that all the experience of all ages 
— and all the aspirations of all the future — are concen- 
tred in this our threatened Constitution, I return once 
more to the charge; I would that my voice could reach 
every Cabin, and every Palace throughout this wide Re- 
public, — that I might say to them, arouse from your 
fatal security: liberty and slavery cannot coexist, but 
one or the other must die! But I cannot! The shadows 
of the days that are gone, gather around me: weeping, 
bleeding, dying, I sink back into my voiceless woe! Yet 
whether this question is to be settled by the ballot box 
or by the cartridge box, men! women! I leave with you 
my undying aspiration ; Oh! my Country, mayest thou 
yet be free! 



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